Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
Scientists have observed a surge of energetic activity in the brains of dying patients, a discovery that reveals that our brains can be active even as our hearts stop beating, reports a new study. The results challenge a longstanding assumption that brains become nonfunctional as they lose oxygen during cardiac arrest, and could eventually open a new window into the weird phenomena associated with near-death experiences (NDE). Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, has been interested in these questions since she first observed surges of activity in the brains of dying rats. The surges consisted of gamma waves, the fastest oscillations in the brain, which are associated with conscious perceptions, lucid dreams, and hallucinations. Now, Borjigin and her colleagues have discovered similar gamma activity in the brains of patients who died in the hospital while they were monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors, which record neural activity. The findings could ... help explain near-death experiences, which the study described as "a biological paradox that challenges our fundamental understanding of the dying brain, which is widely believed to be nonfunctioning" during death. "The dying brain was thought to be inactive; our study showed otherwise," said Borjigin, the senior author of the study. "As far as I am concerned, our study may be as good as it will ever get for finding neural signatures of near-death consciousness."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles on near-death experiences.
The World Health Organization estimates that ... depression and anxiety rose by more than 25 percent in the first year of the COVID pandemic, adding to the nearly one billion people who were already living with a mental disorder. One of the principal ways mental health disorders are thought to manifest is through severed connections between neurons – the winding, spindly cells in our brain and throughout our body essential for interpreting info from the external environment. Certain antidepressant drugs seem to work by increasing serotonin levels, an important neurotransmitter that the brain uses to send signals between neurons. They can help regrow neuronal connections ... only the effect seems to be slower, less dramatic [and] can come with significant drawbacks. In contrast, psychedelics can promote this kind of regrowth in as little as 24 hours, often less. Many experts believe psychedelic drugs ... act like Miracle Grow for neurons, helping them flourish like a dense forest. Pretty much the only reason drugs have a psychoactive effect on us at all is because they closely resemble chemicals our body already produces. Most psychedelic drugs like LSD, DMT and psilocybin are structurally similar to serotonin, so they can act on serotonin receptors, but in a slightly different way. You can think of it like clumsily-made lockpicks that still work in a lock designed for a specific key. But even the slight differences can have profound effects, specifically, altered perception of time and space and intensified colors and sounds.
Note: Read more on the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
